Crowds gather on the Missouri approach to the Champ Clark Bridge before its dedication on June 9, 1928.
No one seemed bothered that Louisiana had just two months to organize what was billed as the biggest day in the city’s history – the June 9, 1928, opening ceremony for the new Champ Clark Bridge. A committee of residents, city officials, business leaders and club representatives met April 3 and agreed the celebration would feature a parade, street dance, an air show, boat regatta and food stands. Homeowners and business people would be encouraged to decorate. The city would contribute $2,000 (more than $28,000 today) and the bridge company $400 (more than $5,000 now) to help cover costs. On the first day of a collection campaign to boost the total, Louisiana businesses contributed what would now be more than $12,500. A final tally was not projected.
The Louisiana Press-Journal said “every citizen should consider himself or herself a member of a reception committee to entertain visitors” and urged that autos be decorated and “placed at the service of visitors to the city on the day of the celebration.” Crowds of 20,000 people – five times the city’s population – were expected. Two hundred men from the Missouri Highway Department and the Highway Patrol were pledged to help with security and traffic control. “The dedication of the Champ Clark bridge is going to be a grand and glorious occasion for the citizens of Louisiana and the people of the county round about,” the Press-Journal predicted.
It was announced May 11 that construction was finished and that the first cars would be allowed to cross starting at noon Monday, May 14. The first four hours would be toll-free. Superstitious executives of the Missouri-Illinois Bridge Company had thought about opening a day earlier, but “don’t like the idea of beginning business on a date which has such an unpopular combination of figures – 13,” the paper said. Clark, as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1911 to 1919, was a prominent national lawmaker. Officials decided the bridge needed an eye-catching tribute to him. It was decided that aluminum plates with a brief biography would be placed at approaches on both sides of the structure. In April 2018, the Missouri Department of Transportation confirmed the plates still exist and that plans call for them to be donated to museums in Louisiana and Pike County, Ill.
Charles Billings was chosen in 1928 as the first toll operator on the bridge. Two other men were hired initially. The three were expected to work eight hour stretches and then rotate to another shift after a month. Tolls were 10 cents one way and 15 cents round trip for pedestrians, 25 and 30 cents for bicycles, 85 cents and $1 for autos with up to seven people and $1 to 3.50 for large trucks. A hearse could cross for $1 and $1.50. Despite the project’s modern focus, at least one rate still reflected an earlier time. A person with a horse-drawn wagon would pay 60 cents one-way and 85 cents round-trip. As it turned out, the first vehicles made their way from Missouri to Illinois on Saturday, May 12. Stark and other members of the bridge company posed for a photo at the Missouri approach. A couple are smiling, and all look very proud. “We are now ready to dedicate this majestic structure named for a great man and spanning a great river,” Stark said.
The big day
An earlier prediction of 20,000 attendees turned out to be way off. Conservative estimates put the crowd at 30,000. Just about all of the 48 states were represented. “The good people of Louisiana have many reasons for being overjoyed and elated when one considers the magnitude of the city’s undertaking in entertaining the host of people from many states who came here to contribute to the biggest day by far ever experienced in the city’s history,” the Press-Journal said. Weather played a big role. The early summer temperature was 72 degrees and skies were sunny.
“That the task was not well and (satisfactorily) accomplished no one will assert,” the newspaper went on. “Even the most skeptical have nothing to the contrary to say. It was a grander success than even the most optimistic, bubbling over with enthusiasm for the big celebration, had the temerity to hope for.” A parade overseen by Edwin Stark stretched for a mile. Led by Katherine Rule, Clarita Richards and Bernice Marion on horseback, the processional started on Frankford Road and proceeded east along Highway 54 to Third Street, south on Third to Georgia, east on Georgia to Main, south on Main to South Carolina, west on South Carolina to Third, north on Third to Georgia and west on Georgia to 18th. Bands from area towns joined Louisiana musicians in playing lively music. The Bowling Green delegation “with two good bands and a long line of decorated floats and automobiles” was a highlight, and the Quincy delegation with its “two splendid bands” even marched across the bridge, the Press-Journal said.
“Thousands of people watched and admired the parade from verandas and front yards of homes along the route and from the sidewalks,” according to the newspaper. “Many expressions of admiration were heard.” The air show featured “performers (who) hung by their teeth over the river or did stunts on a trapeze while hurtling through the air at ninety miles an hour,” it added. A hot air balloon carried a man skyward, then he jumped out and “made a double parachute drop to earth.” Boats “darted like fireflies” beneath the bridge and “the old ferry boat, reading its doom in the mighty steel structure above it, plied back and forth as if in search of passengers as it had done for the last fifty years,” the newspaper said.
The ceremony took place on the bridge near the Missouri side. Crowds lined Highway 54 and the surrounding bluffs. “Looking southward from the platform near the bridge approach there was a veritable sea of faces as far as the eye could discern,” the Press-Journal observed. Mayor J.W. Crewdson welcomed everyone, including members of Clark’s family, Missouri Gov. Sam Baker, Illinois Gov. Len Small and Chicago Mayor William Thompson. Baker praised Louisiana businessman and bridge backer Lloyd Stark as the man who “saved Missouri’s road program” and Small called him someone “who will go down in history as having built more miles of concrete roads than any man who lived on the face of the earth.”
Champ’s daughter, Genevieve Clark Thomson, unveiled a memorial tablet. His son, Bennett Clark, who was then in consideration for a U.S. Senate seat, declined a chance to speak. However, his four-year-old son, Champ, cut the dedication ribbon and sat on Small’s lap. Sporting shorts, sandals and a shirt, the late legislator’s grandson was “about the handsomest specimen of boyhood it would be possible to find,” the Press-Journal mused, adding he was a “gentleman born” and “wholly unspoiled.” Mayor Thompson was wearing what the newspaper called a “ten-gallon sombrero.” A gust of wind caused it to “sail off his head and with what looked like intentional precision” blew it into the water as “the crowd cheered with glee.
”Dignitaries were driven around in style. “None of ‘em were allowed to sneak around unheralded, and pomp and circumstance went with all,” the Press-Journal beamed. Waitresses at local restaurants reported being on their feet for hours and telegraph wires were “hot all day” to send out “stories written by the scores of newspaper men present. "Sightseeing was popular among many visitors, and residents were “pleased to show their guests the picturesque town and its many places of interest,” the Press-Journal wrote. The paper put out a special souvenir edition that cost 25 cents – around $3.50 today.
Toll collection was suspended for the day. Authorities estimated there were 6,000 cars in town and that the line to cross the bridge from Illinois at one point was a mile long. Only one accident was reported due to “the splendid and intelligible traffic regulation,” the Press-Journal said. “The success of the celebration and the wonderfully fine manner in which it was put over once more demonstrates what can be done when the people of a town become united for a given purpose,” it told readers.
Aftermath
Tolls resumed the day after the celebration. Smith-Barr Hospital, which had begun construction while the bridge was in progress, was formally presented to the county on Saturday, June 30, 1928. The now-vacant building served as a nursing home for many years after Pike County Memorial Hospital next door was dedicated on Dec. 26, 1972. On Tuesday, Aug. 28, 1928, a record 7,177 vehicles crossed the bridge. In 2018, daily traffic is around 3,500. Showing no sign of abandoning his altruistic attitude, Stark heavily promoted passage of the $75 million highway bond issue on the November 1928 ballot.
“Floating bond issues to do big things is America’s way of getting ahead,” he said at one meeting. “It is the system that has put America ahead of every other country, the system that has brought our great prosperity, built our railroads and is now building our highways. ”The measure was approved statewide by more than 130,000 votes. In Pike County, it won by a count of 4,268 to 2,621 in record turnout. The state soon recognized U.S. 54 as a primary road and pledged to replace with concrete areas of it that still had gravel. In 1935, the Great Depression caught up with the Missouri-Illinois Bridge Company, which was placed in receivership. The Champ Clark, Bridge Company took its place until the structure was turned over to Pike County, Mo., six years later.
Stark served as governor from 1937 to 1941. One of his key successes was to abolish interstate trade barriers. Stark lost a U.S. Senate race to Harry Truman in 1940 and left politics to return to his family’s nursery. He died at age 85 on Sept. 17, 1972. In December 1951, a settlement in a $150,000 tax lien case helped clear the way the following year for an end to tolls on the bridge. The final charge was collected just before 5:59 a.m. June 17, 1952. A photo shows Ray Dolbeare of Kinderhook, Ill., a farmer and employee of Louisiana’s Hercules plant, paying the final 50-cent fee that Saturday morning. More than one person apparently shot film the day of the 1928 dedication because the Press-Journal had noted that “movie cameras…darted hither and yon grinding out scenes.” However, it is unclear if any of the footage still exists.
Meanwhile, vehicles got bigger over the years and the 20-foot width of the bridge became a concern. Tragedy struck on Dec. 14, 2011. Forty-year-old Stark Brothers executive Kyle David Brown was killed when falling debris from a passing tractor-trailer struck his sports utility vehicle. Authorities said the truck had hit a guardrail. Brown’s wife and two sons were awarded a $3 million settlement in 2014. Ground for the new $60 million Champ Clark Bridge was broken in Louisiana on Sept. 8, 2017. An unexpected highlight of the ceremony was a bald eagle that flew directly overhead as speeches were being given. Construction is scheduled to be finished by the fall of next year.
Words written by the Press-Journal in 1928 could have been uttered that day, and certainly seem appropriate almost a century later. “It is not a one-city affair,” the newspaper said after the dedication. “It was an occasion in which many cities and many counties of a considerable section of the great Mississippi valley were interested. The Champ Clark Bridge may be regarded as a good-will messenger, for its influence in bringing the people close together will be great.”